Been drinking exclusively (give or take) no-sugar caffeinated sodas since a child. Not obese or diabetic. Mid-thirties now. How bad is this?
Diet Soda is essentially just flavored seltzer water with more flavor than the drinks actually labelled as flavored seltzer.
A lot of people in this thread don’t seem to understand that.
Most of the people touring horrible health risks have conflated diet sodas with sugary sodas, some have misunderstood some genuine studies on diet soda. The reason diet sodas correlate strongly with certain health conditions is primarily selection bias. Many diet soda drinkers also eat high-fat, high-sodium, US-style fast food diet, which is actually pretty hard in your body. Also Diet Soda’s sweet taste can trigger heightened insulin production, because your body expects it to be full of sugar, and that heightened insulin can cause sugar cravings, and some people then consume more sugar satisfying that craving that would have been in a regular soda anyway.
Diet Soda is not a diuretic, it hydrates you just as well as tea, seltzer, or even a slightly smaller glass of plain ol water. There’s some unanswered questions about the artificial sweeteners and their long term effects, but any of the really bad stuff they’ve found in actual studies has been at far higher concentration that a person would consume even if Diet Soda was their only fluid intake.
How are your teeth? Also, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11501561/
More modern research is starting to explore the biochemistry involved with adverse outcomes. That being the case, people saying bad outcomes are based on lifestyle issues that go hand in hand with using sugar substitutes are behind the curve in the research.
Overall, my opinion is they are generally bad if you consume them multiple times every day, at minimum.
Phosphoric acid is the bad one. It can affect kidneys.
I was raised drinking soda as the default… water was never something we’d willingly drink. In middle school I noticed that every day I’d get home from school with a splitting headache and I’d take a couple of aspirin and wash it down with a Coke and the headache would go away. My parents realized that it was likely caffeine withdrawal… so instead of cutting out soda, they started getting me caffeine free soda.
It wasn’t until my older brother was in his late 30s and experienced kidney failure and required a transplant that I realized I needed to make a change. I switched over to water and unsweet tea as my defaults. Even after his transplant my brother still would only drink soda… he didn’t survive Covid. And today my mom routinely has kidney issues but still refuses to drink water.
Everyone in my family, except for me, has diabetes and kidney issues. I’m sure my 30+ years of daily soda drinking will catch up to me, but I do credit cutting soda out of my diet as having a major positive impact on my overall health.
Which ingredient do you attribute the kidney issues to?
It’s not so much the that drinking soda caused kidney disease as the lack of ever drinking water.
I attribute the sugar from the soda as helping to cause the diabetes though.
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Soda is mostly water.
You would become used to that sweet taste!
You can abuse your body a hell of a lot up to that age without too many issues. Those issues will start hitting home within the next decade or so though. Make a change for the better while you can.
Seems like a recipe for kidney stones and a crippling caffeine dependency.
I had gallstones and my gallbladder was removed. I put that down to malnutrition though.
Sounds like you have some pretty intense diet issues going on, unfortunately.
Its not good. Caffeinated sodas are a diathetic and it will pull water out of your system. Check out ChubbyEmu’s Channel on YouTube for the explanation. If you have been drinking exclusively sodas since a child with no water in take you could be damaging your liver and kidneys. Also I would strongly suggest taking a muti-vitimin daily. Most diet sodas make it harder for you to absorb certain nutrients like folic acid and IIRC B-12.
If you were one of the people that Aspartame is an issue you would know it by know because almost every time you drank soda you would have a headache. You are probably getting more of them just from the dehydration.
Then there are the dental issues. I don’t care how old you are, start using sensodyne and look at having your teeth sealed. Your dentist can do wonders that were not possible 15 years ago, but that will give you issues.
Now a while back there was a thing about sodas and diet sodas raising your risk of Cancer but you would have to drink 6L+ a day. Lower amounts are believed to actually fight against cancer cells in their early stages.
I did that. My teeth are ruined, my breath is nearly always bad. I’ve had more root canals than is responsible, and it’s been massively expensive.
Drink water and brush your teeth.
Ummmm really bad? Also soft drink production wastes insane amounts of water. I might drink one sometimes as a treat, but when I’m home I usually drink tea or water.
How is the water “wasted”?
It goes in the can and people drink it…
You need water to grow the sugar, some is also used in production.
You definitely do not need water to grow the sugar for sugar free soda, which is what the thread is about.
Edit: and it looks like the biggest source of “wastewater” is the impurities filtered out of well or municipal water to make the filtered water that goes in the can, so basically that “waste water” is mineral slurry and if you filter your drinking water then you’re contributing about the same amount of “waste water” per liter drank.
It still takes more water to produce softdrinks than is in a soft drink. Coca Cola and Pepsi are notorious for destroying aquifers.
If they’re talking about waste during production, then they’re likely referring to water that doesn’t go in the can
Ok, but that’s not really a thing in soda production afaik…
Everybody is different, could be fine could be developing issues that won’t by symptomatic until later. Best way to find out is to ask a doctor who can take a family history, run tests to see if you’re within normal ranges, ask medically relevant questions, etc.
I reckon 3.5/10 bad.
Its bad. Your body still has to process everything in that thats not water and none of it is a positive for the body. Drink water by default and make soda a treat
probably gonna affect your teeth more than anything… but I’m no doctor
Yea I’m also most worried about dental health, soda is pretty hard on teeth.
Not the answer to your question but: Have you tried water? It’s really not that bad. Some even like it.
As for your question: Mayo clinic says “It’s not known if drinking diet soda every day is harmful. The evidence on diet soda’s health effects isn’t clear”. So no one knows, but I thank you for your contribution to this experiment. Hope it works out well.
Yea but what does a mayonaise clinic know about sprite
Yes. It tastes foul. I’m addicted to caffeine. I’ve tried to cut back over the years and I just can’t.
How about fizzy water? (Carbonated water)
Salt always seems to be added to fizzy water. There’s probably a reason. It’s very noticeable and unpleasant. In other carbonated drinks the saltiness is masked. (All carbonated drinks seem to have salt.)
I’m not convinced drinking seltzer is any better than a no-sugar cola. One still has the concerns of carbon dioxide making bones more brittle. Issues about artificial sweeteners and over consumption of caffeine are removed, but at that point just drink water.
Water isn’t addictive, neither is seltzer, but caffeinated drinks are. This advice to just drink seltzer/water is just as helpful as telling a life-time cigarette smoker, “just suck on a stick and pretend you’re smoking”.
It was more about it having a flavour, to help you move away from sofa.
One of the ways I cut back was to have water sitting next to my soda for the first few months. Just have water right next to it. I would always make sure it was fresh, cold water with ice if possible. I would alternate between them so I was getting more water, but also so I could get used to the taste again.
Now, if I ever have a sweet drink, I follow it up with a glass of water after. Even if you just balance it between the two, it’s better than drinking only soda. Moderation is better than nothing at all.
I’m using this strategy too. I have bladders of water around and my water consumption has increased, but that’s more an addition to the soda consumption.
Have you tried various flavored waters or seltzers? Long term the caffeine addiction probably isn’t that great for you either.
You don’t have to go cold turkey, but if I were you I would try to taper down your soda consumption and see how that makes you feel. You may also be slightly dehydrated and a little water (as in flavored waters, if you can handle it) may make you feel a little better.
The salt content of fizzy waters makes me gag. You might as well drink sea water. I perhaps should have specified it’s coke, but when money’s an issue it’s whatever’s cheapest: pepsi or whatever clones can be found. All sugar free though. I don’t like sweet drinks and that includes flavoured water. I either drink water or a no-sugar cola. Anything else is in the ‘omg this tastes absolutely aweful why do people drink this’ territory, but that includes water and colas.
There’s been points in my life where I’d drink in excess and the ‘normal’ flavour of the cola is gone, replaced with a heavy grass taste. It’s actively unpleasant.
Pepsi’s caffeine content must be higher than coke’s, because I absolutely feel dehydrated consuming that. It’s too sweet too. It’s my least favorite cola to consume. Coke would be my favourite.
Tap water is genuinely terrible in some areas. Have you tried bottled water?
My family uses a water softening filter on our tap water and it makes it go from awful tasting to pretty good. We just store water in a jug after filtering and it really helps and is far cheaper than bottled water.
